Cflundred T\}int^ 

Sales Letters 

Gommeni 
GamerorT^^PAi 


erson 




Hundred Point 
Sales Letters 


With Comment by 


Cameron McPherson 

n 


Author of “Letters that Close the Sale and Why” 



CHICAGO 

The Dartnell Corporation 

Publishers “Sales Management Magazine” 

“The Hardware Salesman” 

Dartnell Sales Service and Books on Selling 


H f SI 3 b 

.hi 


Copyright 1921, by The Dartnell Corporation 
1801 Leland Avenue, Ravenswood Station, Chicago, 111. 
Entered in Stationer’s Hall, London 

PRINTED BY THE DARTNELL PRESS 

APR 13 1921 


©C1A612866 



CONTENTS 


The Points of a Hundred-Point Letter. 6 

Why Some Letters Pull and Others Don’t. 7 

Come to the Point Quickly. 10 

With Letter by Edgar W. Jordan 

The Much Over-Worked “You” . 12 

With Letter by Wm. B. Simmonds 

Be Sparing of Superlatives. 14 

With Letter by C. A. MacFarlane 

Quality Is Difficult to Register. 16 

With Letter by E. M. Paget 

One Point at a Time. 18 

With Letter by H. M. Van Hosen 

If It Is to the Jobbers’ Salesman. 20 

With Letter by H. D. Laidley 

Staging the Letter Is Irnportant. 22 

With Letter by John 1. Hoive, Jr. 

When Answering Inquiries. 24 

With Letter by Frank E. Davis 

Writing About Your Advertising. 26 

With Letter by J. Noah H. Slee 

“Halo” Sales as Talking Points. 28 

With Letter—Author Not Known 

Keep Off the Beaten Path. 30 

With Letter by James Wallen 

Our Salesman Is Coming to See You. 32 

With Letter by R. E. Spencer 

The Man Who Won’t Pay Up. 34 

With Letter by Louis V. Eytinge 

Does He Discount His Bills?. 36 

With Letter by J. J. Sherlock 

The Customer Who Stopped Buying.. 38 

With Letter by J. J. Sherlock 

Keeping Dealers On Their Toes. 40 

With Letter by C. S. McCoy 


5 























The Points of a 
Hundred Point Sales Letter 


Selling Qualities 

Composition of 

of The Letter 

The Letter 


Points 

1— Is the Start Effective? 

Be careful it does not challenge 
the reader and put him into an 
antagonistic frame of mind. When 
possible give it a news start, or 
embody in it the I'eason for writ¬ 
ing. Don’t start off from nowhere 5 

2— Does It Appeal to the Reader’s 
Self-interest? 

The motives that make men act 
are (1) Love; (2) Gain; (3) Pride; 

(4) Duty; (5) Fear; (6) Self-in¬ 
dulgence. Unless your letter ap¬ 
peals to these motives in an ir- 
resistable way you will not get 
action. 20 . 

3— Does It Make Him Want What 
You Are Selling? 

You cannot sell a man something 
he does not want. If you are sell¬ 
ing a chair make him think how 
nice it would feel to lounge in a 
big easy chair and smoke his after 
dinner cigar. Use your words to 
paint pictures rather than to 
merely state facts. 10 

4— Does It Create Confidence? 

Are you asking him to take your 
word — a stranger whom he has 
never even met — that what you 
say is true? Why not use a tes¬ 
timonial paragraph and let some¬ 
one else tell about your virtues? 

What provision have you made in 
case he is not satisfied ? Are 
you asking him to buy a pig in 
a poke ? 15 

5— Does It Ask for an Order? 

Remember people are not mind 
readers. You may know perfectly 
well why you are writing them 
and what you want them to do — 
but do they? Never send a letter 
out without clearly stating in the 
last paragraph just exactly what 
you want the reader to do. 5 


Points 

1— Does It Invite Reading? 

Are paragraphs short and mar¬ 
gins wide? Is it free from eras¬ 
ures? Is the signature legible? 20 

2— Is It Easy to Understand? 

Break up all involved sentences 
into several short ones. Use a 
sentence for each idea. Be care¬ 
ful about pronouns, be sure that 
the reference is clear in each 
case. Avoid parenthetical and 
explanatory clauses. 10 

3— Is the Action Continuous? 

Blue pencil all meaningless words 
and phrases. Get the message 
you want to convey clearly fixed 
in your mind, and make each step 
in the letter a step to that end. 10 


4—Does It Reflect Your Personality? 

Tone down extravagant state¬ 
ments that will give the impres¬ 
sion you are a bi’aggart. Let it 
carry an atmosphere of sincerity 
and desire to serve. Be watchful 
for superlatives and the use of 
the word “very”. 5 


5—Is It Grammatically Correct? 

Have you used “was” when you 
ought to say “were”; “who” in 
place of “whom”; “differ with” 
instead of “differ from”; “shall” 
instead of “will”, etc.? 


6 









I4^hy Some Letters Pull 
and Others Dont 


H ave you ever heard a sales manager say of a salesman: “He’s a 
good talker and seems able to get his prospect right up to the 
closing point, but he’s a poor closer.” It is a common fault with 
salesmen. It is still more common with sales letters. There are any num¬ 
ber of men and women who can write a good business letter. The dic¬ 
tion is above criticism. The grammar is flawless. It meets every rule in 
the copy book. It reads smooth and leaves a pleasing impression. In 
short, it does everything a letter ought to do except the most important 
thing of all—bring back the order. 

The knack of being able to write a sales letter that will do this can¬ 
not be learned from books, any more than one can learn from books how 
to paint a Rembrandt. The multitude of books that purport to teach you 
how to write letters have spoiled more promising correspondents than 
they have helped. Such books have a tendency to hamper initiative, un¬ 
dermine originality and encourage writing by rule. The first step in writ¬ 
ing successfully—and this applies to writing articles or letters—is to for¬ 
get rules and be yourself. To use the words of a very successful letter 
writer, “climb into the envelope and seal the flap.” 

There is, however, one sure and never failing way to become a writer 
of successful sales letters and that is by constant practice plus comparing 
the works of other successful letter writers with your own. In other 
words, give full play to your own personality in your letters, but at the 
same time profit by the other man’s work. Study his letters. Find out 
why they pulled. See what he has done that you might do. In most cases 
you will find that your own methods, the result of years of experience, are 
best suited to your personality and to the requirements of your particu¬ 
lar problem. But frequently you will find some strategem of expression, 
some plan of attack, perhaps a better way of putting something that you 
find frequent occasion to use in your letters that will help you to increase 


7 


fFky Some Letters Pull and Others Don't 


returns. You can well afford to search hard and long for these tricks of 
the trade” for they are what make the difference between just an ordi¬ 
nary sales letter and a hundred pointer. 

Do not hesitate to rewrite a letter several times if necessary to make 
sure that it is perfectly clear. Nine-tenths of the sales letters that go out 
fail because the writer did not get firmly fixed in his own mind just 
what he wanted the recipient of his letter to do, and then plan his let¬ 
ter to attain his objective. Too many letters ramble about and go no¬ 
where. To read them is like watching an eight ring circus. After you 
have read them you have no definite impression—just a mass of jumbled 
words. Make your letters paint a picture. All the words in the diction¬ 
ary won’t sell goods. Only ideas, indelibly impressed on the mind of a 
reader, will provoke action. 

Another obvious, yet too often overlooked, reason letters don’t pull is 
that the writer forgets that the person he is writing to is not much in¬ 
terested in what he is writing. On the contrary it has been demonstrated 
that seven times out of ten a recipient (especially if he is a business man) 
will read only the opening paragraph, take a flying jump at the middle 
and then examine the last paragraph to find out what it is all about and 
how much it costs. The most successful sales letters are those that carry 
a complete selling message in the last paragraph or in the return card. The 
American business man is a good deal of a grasshopper. He reads on the 
jump, he decides on the jump and he acts on the jump. A letter that re¬ 
quires a close and thorough reading to make the sale will only sell that 
small percentage of readers who have formed the excellent habit of slow 
and deliberate reading. 

Another point to remember that will always add a percent or two to 
your returns is to put a reason for writing a man into the first paragraph 
of your letter, and tell him just exactly what you want him to do in the 
last paragraph. This may sound ridiculously elementary, but you will be 
amazed at the number of letters that start out with a funny story dragged 
in by the seat of the pants, and then close without even asking for an or- 



Why Some Letters Pull and Others Don't 


del! Can you imagine a salesman walking into your office and starting off 
to tell you a funny story without even saying what the reason for his visit 
was, and then going away without telling you what he wanted you to do? 
Can you imagine how many orders he would get? A letter is a salesman 
on paper. The same motives that make men buy from a man will make 
him buy from a letter. 

In the following pages I have reproduced some letters that have 
proved unusually successful. I have called them 100 Point Letters, be¬ 
cause like the 100 Point Salesman they have made quota plus. Accom¬ 
panying each letter I have attempted to show why it was successful. 
Study each of these letters carefully. Bisect it for ideas that you can use. 
You will have to dig for them, but they are there if you look hard enough. 
I am sure that you will find at least one thought that will help you write 
better letters. That is all any book or treatise on the subject of letter 
writing can hope to do. 


CAMERON McPherson 



Come to the Point Quickly 


I T is said of Cyrus Curtis, of the Cur¬ 
tis Publishing Company, that a 
great deal of his success is due to 
his ability to edit letters. He is adept 
at wielding the blue pencil. One of his 
regular “stunts” is to take the last par¬ 
agraph of a letter and put it first. 

A common fault of inexperienced 
writers is to kill their stories with 
drawn out introductions. Business men 
who wouldn’t think of going into a pros¬ 
pective buyer’s office and opening a sales 
canvass with a funny story think it 
“clever” to start their letters out that 
way. There are even so-called letter ex¬ 
perts who insist on beginning a letter 
with some remote introduction which 
they drag into the letter by the seat of 
the pants. You, no doubt, can recall 
many such letters. They probably suc¬ 
ceeded in getting your attention, but 
they didn’t get your money. In the 
vernacular of the stage, the action was 
sluggish. 

There are buyers who will stand for 
the drawn-out introduction and may 
even like it. But the great majority of 
American business men want to know 
“what’s on your mind”. They want you 
to get to the point. Reading our morn¬ 
ing’s mail is a routine duty that we 
want to get over with quickly. We have 
no time to take pleasure jaunts off to 
wonderland. 

The writer recently made an inter¬ 
esting test to determine the relative 
value of different ways of opening a let¬ 
ter. To a list of 5,000 manufacturers 
he sent the same letter with five differ¬ 
ent opening paragraphs—using a differ¬ 
ent style of first paragraph for every 
1,000 names. The letter to the first lot 


of names began by asking a question. 
It pulled 2.3% replies. The letter to the 
second thousand had a news start and 
produced 3.3% replies. For the third 
letter a sensational statement was used 
but the returns were less than 2%; the 
fourth letter attempted to sympathize 
with the reader and the returns were 
also less than 2%, but the fifth letter 
took the reader’s attention for granted 
and boldly asked permission in the very 
first sentence to send the book “on sus¬ 
picion”. It won the test with a return 
of 4.3%. 

A good illustration of how an other¬ 
wise good letter was spoiled by dila¬ 
tory action was related by the late Ed¬ 
gar W. Jordan, considered one of the 
most able producers of sales letters of 
his time. Mr. Jordan was commissioned 
to prepare a letter for a manufacturer 
of roach powder. The letter was to be 
mailed out to hospitals. The first let¬ 
ter started out by saying that the 
writer had talked with many hospital 
superintendents and knew just how 
they felt about roaches, etc. In the 
middle of the letter he finally came to 
the point and made the assertion that 
it was unnecessary for them to have 
any roaches at all, that he would under¬ 
take to rid their premises of roaches on 
a “no riddance, no pay” basis. This let¬ 
ter pulled three percent returns, but it 
did not pay. So another letter—that 
shown on the page facing was prepared. 
This letter came to the point quickly. 
There was no side excursion as in the 
first letter, yet the same identical talk¬ 
ing points were used and the same 
names circularized. The second letter 
pulled over five times the orders that 
the first one did, scoring seventeen per¬ 
cent replies. 


10 





LETTER BY 
EDGAR W. JORDAN 
DETROIT 


Vy Dear Sir; 

Each eockro&eh upon your premleea- 

la there »ith your full permleelen. 

I undertake to prove thle to you if you will give two minutee to the reading 
of thia letter. 

I ■will rid your premieee of every laet tr&oe of roachee withoxit one penny of 
your noney being produced. I mean every ayllable of that etatement. 1 can't make it too 
etrong. So.' 1 sa going to repeat it and emphaaize it. 

Tell me how many floora are in your hoapital and what site they are. 

I'll send you enough of Uurray'a Roach Doom to exterminate every roach. And 
they'll atay exterminated for one year by Shrewabury clook—oae year. 

Ton aend no money, remember. I atake Uurray'a Doom agalnat your roachee. 

When they're gone, to your aatiefaotlon, then you can remit the email amount we aak. Are 
you willittgt 

low let me tell you what Uurray'a Roach Doom ie. 

It'a a powder that le not poieonoue. It la practically odorleas. 

It ie dlatrlbuted, flret, by means of the Murray powder "gun" which a 10-year- 
old child can use. Get it to where the roachee are. Then the fun begins. 

Roaches can't keep away from this powder. They love it. But the minute they 
touch it they actually go crazy. They race through every nook and cranny of their hiding- 
places. They carry it with them. They distribute it where no human agency could reach. 
The young roaches, which very rarely appear in pnblle, come in contact with the Doom. And 
they're gone. 

The strength of Murray's Doom does not abate few one year. As the eggs, which 
are deposited in the runways, hatch out the young encounter the Doom. And they're gone. 

And I prove all those things to you by standing behind my 24-year-old guar¬ 
antee of "Ho riddance, no pay". 

Tou aend me no money until the roaches are gone. 

I'm oven enolosing a Special Trial Offer Slip which lets you in on a special 
price when you do remit, because you will—it nevwr misses. 

If you can frame a fairer offer than that I'll gladly sign it—but, remember, 
you're responsible for the preeenoe of roaches on your premises after this. 

Toutb very slncerslj , 


This letter sent to 5,000 names pulled 17 percent returns whereas returns 
on previous letters mailed to the same list had averaged only a little better 
than 3 percent. 


11 



The Much Over-Worked “You” 


W HEN teaching the mysteries of 
sales correspondence first became 
a popular indoor sport there was 
one thing that the teacher always em¬ 
phasized. “Never, never, never,” he 
wrote, “talk about ‘we’—always write 
from the ‘you’ point of view, because 
there is nothing that interests a man so 
much as himself.” The net result of all 
this agitation was a deluge of letters 
that ‘youed” at you from the opening 
paragraph to the closing period. It was 
‘you’ this, and ‘you’ that and ‘you’ the 
other thing. 

While it is undeniably true that a 
man is more interested in himself than 
he is in any one else, nevertheless it is 
a mistake to think that “I” and “we” 
have no place in a sales letter. If your 
letter is written with the idea of serv¬ 
ice and helpfulness, it doesn’t matter 
much how many “we’s” and “I’s” you 
put into it. The important thing is to 
be able to put yourself in the other fel¬ 
low’s place, and discuss things that in¬ 
terest him rather than discuss things 
that interest you. 

For illustration take a letter selling 
soap. You are pardonably proud of the 
fact that your soap is nearly pure— 
purer perhaps than any other soap sold 
at the price. You have worked hard to 
acquire a reputation as a quality soap 
maker. You have made many sacrifices 
in order that your customers will know 
you as being fair and honorable. If you 


are guided wholly by instinct you will 
incline to harp on these points in your 
letters. But the man you are writing 
to doesn’t care nearly as much about 
these things as he does about what your 
soap will do for him. 

The man you are writing to, if he is 
a dealer, wants to know how much prof¬ 
it he can make on your soap, what you 
are going to do to help him sell it, and 
why he should put in another brand of 
soap when he already has a dozen sim¬ 
ilar brands on his shelves. If he is a 
consumer he is interested in its purity 
only from the standpoint of how it will 
affect his skin, its cleansing properties 
and its economy. The fact that you 
were established in business in 1805, or 
that your plant takes up ten acres or 
that you make enough soap to reach 
from New York to San Francisco every 
month, are not of direct interest except 
when they are used to prove a state¬ 
ment that does interest him. 

The first principle of salesmanship— 
either mail or personal—is to sell func¬ 
tions. There are exceptions to this, as 
in selling a technical product where it 
is generally best to give a buyer the 
facts and let him arrive at his own con¬ 
clusions through them, but as a general 
rule the less your letter talks about the 
product and the 'more it talks about 
what it will do for the man who buys it, 
the more effective it will be. 


12 







LETTER BY 

WILLIAM B. SIMMONS 

CHICAGO 


Dear Sir: 

If you aren't too busy, "suppose" with me a few minutes. If you 
can't do it now, shove this back on your desk until you can. 

Suppose, first, a new family moved into your community - a family you 
Icnew would be desirable customers, a family whose trade you knew you could hold, 
once you got it started. 

Suppose, next you met the head of that family, and as courteously and 
tactfully as you could you spoke of your store, your goods, and your desire to 
shew him that you deserved his business. And - he turned on his heel without 
a word to you. 

Suppose again you met him, and again you tried to show him from an¬ 
other angle that it would bo to his profit, as well as yours, to trade with you. 
And - again he refused to even answer. 

Suppose now, you repeated your requests on a dozen different occasions 
and each time he bottled up like a clam - couldn't get a word out of him. 

I'll bet you'd be "hoppin' mad." Well, in a way, you're him, and I'm 
you. I've written you a dozen or more letters, and each time, so to speak, 
you've spun on your heel without even an answer. BUT, here’s the difference. 
I'm not a bit mad, but I'm mighty curious. 

I've searched our proposition over from A to Izzard, trying to find 
out where'it has fallen down in your eyes - why it has failed to interest you. 

\Jitbin the last six months, 682 first olass merchants have ordered 
from us for the first time. If every single one of them isn't thoroughly 
satisfied, I don't know it, and a kick into this office hits me first. 

I'm mighty curious to know why we haven't had a trial order from you. 
There is an order card attached. Ask your glove girl what she needs, and let 
us supply you. That would put us on trial. 

Or write me whore the hitch comes in that is keeping your house and 
ours apart. At any rate, please don't turn on your heel. 

Very truly yoxa*s. 


This letter pulled 71 percent replies! An analysis of 71 answers shows 14 
orders; 11 requests for a salesman to call; 17 requests for quotations; 22 
apologies for not answering previous letters; and seven “not interested”. 



Be Sparing of Superlatives 


T he tone of a letter makes or 
breaks it. The skilled salesman 
knows this and consequently 
strives in his letter to give it an atmos¬ 
phere of restraint rather than extrava¬ 
gance. There has been a lot of fun poked 
at such expressions as “we beg to state” 
“your obedient servant” and “with your 
permission”, and perhaps these are a bit 
unnecessary, but they at least serve to 
give a letter a tone of humility which is 
always pleasing to a reader. 

The tone of a letter is influenced to a 
great extent by the use of superlatives. 
Such statements as “the best in the 
world”, “the very best made”, “none 
better”, however true they may be, give 
to your letter the flavor of braggadocia 
that is decidedly harmful. In a manual 
issued by the National Cash Register 
Company to its salesmen there is a sec¬ 
tion devoted to this important point. 
The salesmen are told that one extrava¬ 
gant statement causes a buyer to dis¬ 
count every other statement a salesman 
makes. It challenges disbelief and in¬ 
creases sales resistance. 

The letters of both Lincoln and 
Franklin, while not sales letters, are 
noteworthy because of the tone of sin¬ 
cerity and deference to the opinions of 
others. Commenting on the importance 
of humility as a factor in dealing with 
men, Benjamin Franklin says in his 
autobiography: “I cannot boast of much 
success in acquiring the reality of this 
virtue, but I had a good deal with re¬ 
gard to the appearance of it. I made it 
a rule to forbear all direct contradiction 
to the sentiment of others and all posi¬ 
tive assertions of my own. I even for¬ 
bid myself, agreeably to the old laws of 
our Junto, the use of every word or ex¬ 
pression in the language that imported 
a fixed opinion, such as certainly, un¬ 
doubtedly, etc., and I have adopted in¬ 


stead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, 
or I imagine a thing to be so and so, or 
it so appears to me at present. 

“When another asserted something 
that I thought an error, I denied myself 
the pleasure of contradicting him ab¬ 
ruptly, and in answering I began by ob¬ 
serving that in certain cases or circum¬ 
stances his opinion would be right, but 
in the present case there seemed to me 
to be some difference. The modest way 
in which I proposed my opinions pro¬ 
cured for them a readier reception and 
less contradiction.” 

So important is the tone of a letter 
that it is often wise to deliberately 
understate what might not be readily 
believed. “During our 30 years in busi¬ 
ness we have not had a single dissatis¬ 
fied customer” may be an absolutely 
true statement. But to the man who 
meets you for the first time by letter 
it sounds “fishy” to say the least. He 
would greatly discount such a statement 
and discount every other statement you 
made as well. On the other hand, if 
you said “During 30 years in business 
we have only had 3 dissatisfied custom¬ 
ers,” he would unconsciously feel that 
you were an honest man and would tell 
the real facts—^not merely write what 
you wished were facts. 

Exact statements and exact figures 
should be used for the same reason in 
preference to approximated statements 
and “round” numbers. They stamp your 
letter with the earmarks of accuracy. 
“Last year we sold 1,127,106 packages” 
is far better practice than “last year 
we sold over a million”. These are 
points, which in themselves are not im¬ 
portant, but which from the standpoint 
of affecting the “tone” of your letters, 
make the difference between success 
and failure. 


14 





LETTER BY 

C. A. MAC FARLANE 

NEW YORK 


AQguet 20th, 1909. 


Kr. Robert E. Buchenan, 

Chicago Dniversity, Chicago. 

Dear Sir: 

Probably you will be pretty biuy trying to keep cool 
when this letter reaches you; but it will nererthelese pay you 
to take time to think a little, right now, about YOUR PALL CLOTHES. 

Thinky not about the sins of your tailor, but about 
your own negligence which so often heretofore has stood in the 
way of your getting "exactly what you wanted." 

Think how the best patterns have been node up for other 
men by the time you got around to order—and then DON'T THINK 
I am "rushing the season" when I tell you that my line of PALL 
AND WINTER WOOLENS are now ready for your inspection. 

This early announcement, that you have perhaps come^ 
to regard as a perfunctory trade appeal, is a REAL OPPORTUNITY 
for the man who wants to buy the most satisfaction as well as 
the beet obtainable clothes fora given sum of money. 

By selecting your suitings well in advance of the 
season you not only get first choice of the confined patterns 
which cannot bo duplicated; but also this bemefit of leisurely, 
unhurried tailoring. Less chanoe for a garment to be wrong in 
the first place; more chance, if it is. wrong, to make it right. 

Here in my new REPUBLIC BUILDING establishment you 
will find an exceptional assortment of Imported and Domestic 
fabrics for fall wear - and you will find an organization capable 
of workmanship that makes every completed suit or overcoat a 
real bargain at the price that is asked for it. 

Come in at your comvwiience, and lot mo reserve the 
patterns you like, even if you are not now ready to order. 

Yours very truly. 


This letter was mailed slightly in advance of the season to a list of mem¬ 
bers in clubs and associations. It resulted in enough business to keep the 
tailor working at capacity for three months, and added 150 new accounts. 



Quality is Difficult to Register 


D uring the late war a piano mer¬ 
chant in a Western mining town 
loaded up with low priced pianos 
anticipating the demand to follow in 
the wake of high wages paid to miners. 
Much to his surprise he soon sold out 
the few high priced pianos he had in 
stock, but found it quite impossible to 
sell cheap ones. The miners wanted 
only the very best. Finally he hit upon 
the expedient of marking the cheap 
pianos up to the prices asked for Stein- 
way’s and Mason & Hamlins. He soon 
disposed of his entire stock. 

This incident reveals a peculiarity of 
human nature common to all of us. We 
usually judge quality by the price tag. 
Consequently it is a good plan in selling 
a quality product to use the high price 
as a talking point, instead of trying to 
explain it away. The mere statement 
that the thing you are selling is the 
highest price article made will often 
convey proof of quality lacking in sev¬ 
eral pages of argument. 

It is a mistake to assume, however, 
that people want quality. They don’t. 
They have to be made to want it first. 
The average person is always looking 
for something cheap. First cost looms 
up much bigger than ultimate cost with 
most of us. Consequently in selling a 
quality product against price competi¬ 
tion, the first thing to do in your letter 
is to make the buyer want quality be¬ 
fore you start to tell him about the 
quality points of your particular article. 

A roller bearing maker tried for 
years to sell his bearings to a manufac¬ 
turer of railroad hand cars. But be¬ 
cause they would add $4.00 to the price 


of the hand car he was never able to 
succeed. The hand car manufacturer 
held that he couldn’t get $104 for the 
cars with the quality bearings and the 
added expense would mean $10,000 a 
year added to his costs which was equal 
to nearly of his total profits. The 
bearing manufacturer finally sold him 
by showing the hand car maker how he 
could double his sales if he could guar¬ 
antee his cars for two years. The bear¬ 
ings were the weakest part of the car, 
so^^he had to improve them before he 
could dare guarantee the car itself. 

A well-known saw salesman, for ex¬ 
ample, makes it a point to ask a pros¬ 
pect if he could sell a high priced saw. 
Thus he takes his product out of the 
run-of-the-case class at the very begin¬ 
ning of his canvass. When the wily 
dearer counters with: “What do you 
jnean—high priced saw?” It gives the 
salesman his opportunity to bring out 
the various reasons why the dealer can 
make more money selling a saw that in¬ 
sures satisfaction as compared with one 
that will most likely prove unsatisfac¬ 
tory. 

Another good way of registering 
quality is to associate your article with 
other products of undisputed quality. A 
magazine reaching dentists uses this 
slogan: “The Printers’ Ink of the dental 
field”. Advertisers know Printers’ Ink 
to be a publication of quality. The as¬ 
sociation automatically places the un¬ 
known publication on a plane with the 
well-known one in the reader’s mind. 
In the same way a manufacturer of 
phosphate registers quality by compar¬ 
ing his phosphate with the Steinway 
piano. 


16 




LETTER BY 
E. M. PAGET 
CHICAGO 


Gentlemen; 

A long, long time ago an honest man named Stein.ray started 
in to make Pianos. His one idea was to make good pianos; bettor 
than could be produced. Today the name Steinway stands for all 
that is good in Pianos. 

I know not how long Mr. Steinway seasoned his sounding 
boards under running water - seme people tell me it was for 
ten years. But I do know that he seasoned them until they 
were RIGHT. And, like every other part of his instrument, 
it was the best that could be made. 

I've a little Dutch E style upright Steinway that has 
been in our family since 1877 - 40 years of constant use. 

And on those evenings when my duties do not call me away 
on the road, I listen to delightful music from this same 
instrument. And I wonder, as a discordant strain sometimes 
reaches my ear from a neighborhood "competitor" If their 
nearly-new piano has a sounding board seasoned for six or 
eight months - instead of as many years. Guarantees are 
cheap - mayhap my neighbor's piano was guaranteed "Just 
as good as a Steinway" - and the price "much less"! 

While not familiar with the vicissitudes of Mr. 

Steinway's early career, I can hear people saying to 
him; "Why, Steinway, I can buy Pianos just as good as 
yours for half the price". And I can imagine as inscrut¬ 
able smile on his sad countenance as he gently turns to 
pursue his labors. For even while he knew he had the best 
piano made, do you think ho was content at that? No sirJ 
Like every true artisan, he was constantly stnding, planning, 
spheming to make it better. 

Wo believe our Self-Rising Biscuit Flour Phosphate is 
the best made. We know that it gives better results in 
self-rising biscuit flour than any other phosphate. We 
have studied, planned, worked and experimented these past 
29 years to proddeo the best self-rising buscuit flour 
phosphate that can be made. The success of every one of 
our customers shows how well we have succeeded. 

And if you will tell us how we can help you to use 
more of our goods we will do it gladly and cheerfully. 

Respectfully, 


The man who wrote this letter took his compensation in the form of a com¬ 
mission on sales from his letters. In one year, wholly through letters like 
this, he made over $18,000. And that was when $18,000 was $18,000. 


17 



One Point at a Time 


A SALE is made in a man’s mind. 
Before you can get his order it is 
therefore necessary to register a 
sequence of impressions, the combined 
result of which will be to make him 
want the thing you are selling more 
than the money it costs. If the amount 
is larger than $10 it is practically im¬ 
possible to register the necessary num¬ 
ber of selling impressions in one letter. 
A series of letters is needed. 

In planning a series of letters de¬ 
termine whether the recipient is going 
to be hostile or receptive to your propo¬ 
sition. Then set down on paper the 
outstanding points that must be regis¬ 
tered in the buyer’s mind before he will 
act. Make each of these points the 
basis of a letter, rather than write a 
series of letters each of which echoes all 
the points. 

A sales letter that foolishly tries to 
put over a number of sales points at 
one time invariably will fail, because 
lack of space prevents your adequately 
registering any of them. It is not 
enough to merely state a point. You 
must dramatize it in such a way that it 
will create a sales picture in the mind 
of the man you wish to sell. 

Illustrating this principle: Assume 
that you are selling a mechanical de¬ 
vice which has three distinct construc¬ 
tion features, a very low price in pro¬ 
portion to what it does, a long life, and 
a host of satisfied users. You could 
quite easily get up a letter that would 
cover all six of these points, but it 


would lack effectiveness. Much better 
results would be obtained, and a far 
greater yield from the list would result, 
if a series of five or six letters is used, 
each letter taking up one point of su¬ 
periority at a time. 

In planning such a series, however, 
change the dress of the letter for each 
mailing. One letter-head, for example, 
might picture the feature being dis¬ 
cussed. Another might show a cut of 
the factory, still another might be of 
the four page illustrated type, the in¬ 
side pages carrying the descriptive mat¬ 
ter and the first or letter page carrying 
the personalized sales appeal. By vary¬ 
ing the dress in this way there is little 
likelihood of the recipient laying the let¬ 
ter aside unread as a result of having 
recognized the letter-head. 

Another good idea for varying the 
dress of a series of letters is to have 
each letter in the series signed by a dif¬ 
ferent executive. The J. I. Case Plow 
Works use this idea in their follow-up 
literature effectively. One letter is from 
the branch manager, another from the 
general sales manager, the next from 
the production manager, still another 
from the manager of the service depart¬ 
ment, and the last or final letter from 
the president himself, neatly typed on 
the personal engraved letter-head used 
by that official for occasions of impor¬ 
tance. A letter-head and letter used in 
a follow-up by the Crawford Chair 
Company to “put over” the service they 
are able to render is shown on the page 
opposite. 


18 






George Hefferan. 

President 


Frederick A. Gorham, 

Vice-President 


J. Harry Schoneberger, 

Secretarif-Manager 



Starting ever; 
on thei^ 


^romiseit 


/^rawford’s sr 

Department 

GRAND LEDGE, MICH., 


December 6, 1913, 

Printers' Ink Publishing Co., 

New York, N. Y. 


You order goods and make pf'om'ises for delivering tkom based 
on the manufacturer's promise of delivery. That day comes - - but the 
goods don't. You write and get another promise - - and another dis¬ 
appointment. You write again and - - well, by that time you're con¬ 
sidered about the biggest liar in the whole state - - with no exceptions 
- - and "unreliability" is stamped two inches deep under the hide of 
..hat customer and the resolution to avoid your store hereafter is in¬ 
herited by her next two generations. 


For two thousand years men put thread in the wrong end of 
the needle. Then Kowe came along - - changed it - - and ever since we 
have had the sewing machine. 


Since the time of Thomas Sheraton, furniture factories have 
promised shipments in the "hit and miss" way. Shipments have been 
grossly miscalculated. The dealer has stood the brunt and is still 
paying the penalty every day. 


Post says, n'here's a reason". I say, "There’s several Rea¬ 
sons". Our human service - - which Is the highest form of self in¬ 
terest - - is explained fully on the inside of this letter head. In 
addition to good chairs, a chair factory must show signs of life - - 
have a brain - - a conscience - - and the dealers interest at heart. 
Otherwise it's the "toboggan" for both of us. 


Investigate this service next month when you're in Grand 
Rapids. Wa shall be at the same old stand - - first floor of the 
Klingman Building. 


JHS/0 



READ THE WORKING OF "OUR SERVICE DEPARTMENT ' ON INSIDE OF THIS LETTERHEAD 


This letter was not intended to produce direct returns. It is reproduced 
here merely as an exhibit to illustrate the way one concern “put over” the 
service idea. Letter by H, M. Van Hosen. 


19 







If it is to the Jobbers’ Salesman 


T he jobber’s salesman is usually 
the weak link in the distribution 
chain when the product is sold 
through those channels. As a rule he 
is a “thumber”—meaning that his main 
occupation is asking the dealer what he 
wants today and then thumbing 
through a voluminous catalogue to get 
the price. It is seldom that he goes out 
of his way to sell the dealer your prod¬ 
uct. Yet if he did this to any extent at 
all it would easily double and treble 
your sales in his particular territory. 
If you could get several hundred job¬ 
bers’ salesmen to do this it would mean 
a substantial sales gain and a larger 
volume. 

Getting the jobber’s salesman to talk 
up your line is not an easy matter, but 
it can be done. It can be done by means 
of advertisements placed in publica¬ 
tions circulating among jobbers sales¬ 
men such as “The Hardware Salesman” 
going to wholesale hardware salesmen 
all over the country, and The Jobbers' 
Salesman circulating in the electrical 
field. Sometimes it is possible to get 
the jobbers to furnish you with a mail¬ 
ing list of their salesmen and you can 
then write them direct as well as reach 
them with your advertising. 

The secret of getting jobbers to let 
you have mailing lists of their salesmen 
is to convince them that it is your inten¬ 
tion to help their men sell your com¬ 
petitor’s as well as your own products. 
If you make saws explain to the jobber 
that you have some ideas which you 
want to pass on to his salesmen that 
will help them to sell more saws. If you 


make cover paper tell the jobber you 
want to tell his salesmen how they can 
get an order of cover paper with every 
order of book paper. If you will do this 
the jobber will be far more likely to 
heed your request than if you give him 
the impression that your object is to get 
him to push your particular product to 
the exclusion of other competing prod¬ 
ucts carried by him, some of which for 
all you know, may pay him a larger 
profit. 

It must be remembered, however, 
that jobbers’ salesmen are very busy 
men, and as a rule are over-burdened 
with circular matter. Consequently to 
get their favorable attention you must 
resort to strategy. You have got to de¬ 
vise some sort of a plan that will arouse 
their interest, and make them look for¬ 
ward to each successive letter in the 
campaign. An excellent illustration of 
such a campaign is “Oval-F” series of 
letters and mailing pieces used by the 
Miniature Lamp Division of the Feder¬ 
al Mazda Lamp Works of the General 
Electric Company. A typical letter 
from this series is shown on the facing 
page. 

It is interesting to note that as a re¬ 
sult of this campaign, sales of jobbers 
were greatly stimulated. It was impos¬ 
sible to keep definite figures, the com¬ 
pany reports, but many instances are 
cited to show the effectiveness of the 
letters. For example, the Chicago office 
points to certain jobbers whose lamp 
sales for the month following the cam¬ 
paign were the largest in their history. 


20 









L. Roundup 
^headquarters 

- - I _ 


(^K 


llllr 



THE OVAL F BRAND 


Dear Pardner:- 

One of the first things for a good cow-man to do is to 
make sure he's connected up with a'first class outfit - not a bunch 
of rustlers or greasers. 

Just so, I'd like you to realize that the Oval F outfit 
is made up of boys who are mighty handy at roping, hogtielng and 
branding auto lamp business. We're real pif^ud to have a fancy 
rider and roper like yourself in our outfit; we'll back your play 
to the limit and we'll count on your loyalty to the same limit. 

The Oval F brand is better known than any other brand on 
the range, bar none. It stands for National quality and the buyer 
is glad to pay a better price for this brand than for culls he could 
purchase a lot cheaper. We are specialists on miniature lamps. We 
do not handle large lamps and we sell primarily only through jobbers. 

Believing in your brand and in your outfit is half the 
battle; it raises your enthusiasm and lowers sales resistance. 

That's why I am so anxious that you should believe heart and soul in 
Federal Mazda auto lamps and in the, organization behind them before 
actually hopping into the saddle to take part in the sales round¬ 
up. The booklet "Individuality plus Organization" which I am send¬ 
ing enclosed, will tell you something of the Oval F outfit. 

Also under separate cover I'm sending you the Oval F 
oranding iron. I hope you'll keep it so busy that it won't have t 
chance to rust. 


More about the round-up next week. 



The test of a letter to jobber’s salesmen is largely the effect it has on the 
jobber. Practically every jobber handling Federal Miniature Lamps wrote 
complimentary letters to the manufacturer who used this series of letters. 


21 








Staging the Letter is Important 


A rthur Brisbane, the famous ed¬ 
itor, scored a bull’s eye when he 
said that a good picture was 
worth a thousand words. People get the 
picture habit in the cradle and it sticks 
to them through life. If you don’t be¬ 
lieve it watch the average man open up 
a magazine—the first thing he does is 
to look at the pictures. It is so easy to 
look at a picture. In order to capitalize 
the universal liking to look at pictures 
the so-called “illustrated letter” is use¬ 
ful. Harper & Brothers, who carry the 
use of specially designed illustrated let¬ 
ter heads to a nice point, repoj’t that on 
a mailing returns will average about 
one-quarter of one percent better when 
an illustrated letter head is used than 
from the same letter on plain station¬ 
ery. This means two and one-half added 
orders for every 1,000 circulars mailed 
out. 

The success of the single page illus¬ 
trated letter led Phil Lennon, of the 
Royal Tailors, but at that time asso¬ 
ciated with H. M. Van Hosen in direct 
mail advertising, to design some years 
ago what has since become known as 
“the four-page illustrated letter head”. 
The advantages of this style of letter 
head are that it costs less to produce 
than a letter with enclosure separate, 
and has the advantage of keeping the 
letter and descriptive matter together. 
They reach the recipient together, and 
they are filed together. One cannot be¬ 
come separated from the other. This 
style of letter head has had a large run. 


It has its drawbacks, however, and 
should be used cautiously. 

The A. W. Shaw Company find that 
better results can be secured with 
homely stationery than from letters 
where no expense is spared on making 
the dress attractive. The most produc¬ 
tive letters sent out by this concern 
have been printed on the cheapest kind 
of paper, with an equally poor grade of 
printing. Shaw also has found one-cent 
stamps more profitable than two-cent 
postage, and does not fill in form let¬ 
ters. While the use of two-cent postage 
slightly increases the returns from a 
mailing, the increased returns do not 
justify the added cost. A filled-in let¬ 
ter, unless perfectly done, is likely to 
make a man hostile to the letter. A 
good caption is quite as good, if not to 
be preferred. 

Don’t fool yourself about fooling peo¬ 
ple with circular letters. There is some¬ 
thing about a letter written to a com¬ 
posite audience that gives itself away 
no matter how well the mechanical de¬ 
tails have been worked out. In a great 
many cases the moment the reader sees 
your name he knows instinctively that 
you are trying to sell him something. 
He also knows, without reading your 
letter, that you have no reason for writ¬ 
ing him personally and especially. So 
long as a majority of your readers are 
so minded, why spend time or money 
trying to make them think your letter 
is something that it isn’t. Deception is 
a poor foundation for confidence build¬ 
ing. Without confidence there can be no 
sales. 


22 





LETTPJR BY 

JOHN I. HOWE, JR. 

NEW YORK 




HELLO HUCK" 


VMITE WASHES 
THE FENCE 
-ev PBOXV 


Harper ^ Brothers 

Franklin Square—NewYork 
Established * 1812 





Dear Ur. 

You base read, possibly, of tne captured English 
aviator who was mistreated by bis Gorman jailer, until ha dis¬ 
covered his fondness for MASK TWAM - and lived thereafter on 
the fat of the land, such as it was. 

In any case, you know that the genius of liLARK 
TWAIN. sweeps over all boundaries and hatreds - that_people who 
have read his works are brothers - that he has carried the best 
of America to king and peasant in every land. 

To you, of MARK TWAIN'S own America, we ere making 
a n6w and spscial offer* 

To combat the high cost of all the materials of 
book manufacturers, we have made one limited edition of a special 
set of all the best of MARK TWAIN, in 12 volumes, at an extra¬ 
ordinarily low price. 

With this set, we will give you, absolutely free, 

5 volumes of REX BEACH - the most popular writer of thrilling 
Merican stories living today - stories MARK TWAIN would have 
loved if he could have lived to read them. 

Both these sets are splendid books, cade accord¬ 
ing to standards of book making that are nowadays all too rare. 
Never before has the HOUSE OP HARPER made such an extraordi- 
nary offer - an offer that by virtue of its .attractiveness 
cannot last long. 

The card enclosed is your opportunity 
if you act quickly. Pill it out and mail it to us. 

There is no obligation. But you must be quick or • 

there will be no sets left for you. 

You may examine the books for ten 
days. If you do not like them, send them back 
If you do, pay a small amount monthly. 

This is an opportunity that 
will not come again. Send the card at 
' once. 


Yours very truly, 


E WALKED WtTM KIN&S" 




By using illustrated letter heads in colors Harper & Brothers find they can 
increase the returns on letters selling books one quarter of one percent. 
The average return on letters of this kind averages about 2 percent. 


23 





When Answering Inquiries 


H omer Buckley tells of a case 
where his firm wanted to buy a 
motor truck. He wrote eleven 
companies for literature and prices. In 
only one instance was the inquiry han¬ 
dled intelligently, that concern being 
The White Company. This company 
made an analysis of Mr. Buckley’s 
needs without his knowing it, then 
wrote him fully and at length. As a 
result the White Company got the busi¬ 
ness. 

Thousands of dollars are lost to con¬ 
cerns every year because they fail to 
properly handle inquiries. Inquiries 
cost a great deal of money to secure, 
yet they are all too often regarded as a 
nuisance and handled mechanically. It 
pays to take pains to answer a man’s 
questions when he writes you for infor¬ 
mation. It is a mistake to send him a 
stereotyped form letter and hope that 
the salesman will do the rest. Better 
by far not to send any letter at all. 

When the unit of sale is small, and 
necessity compels the use of form let¬ 
ters for this purpose it is good practice 
to devote the letter to getting the cata¬ 
logue read. Too often the letter merely 
duplicates the catalogue. It is filled with 
meaningless generalities. It annoys, 
rather than informs, the prospective 
buyer. 

An excellent plan is to prepare sev¬ 
eral form letters that fit different 
classes of inquiries. If the product is 
being sold to concerns in varied lines of 


business prepare a letter with descrip¬ 
tive matter that will fit each particular 
application. When a banker writes to 
The Addressograph Company for infor¬ 
mation about the addressograph he 
does not receive a general letter telling 
him what a wonderful machine the ad¬ 
dressograph is, but he gets a carefully 
drawn letter telling him how the ad¬ 
dressograph is profitably used by bank¬ 
ers all over the country. That is what 
interests him—how he can save money 
by using the addressograph in his busi¬ 
ness. 

In the same way a concern selling un¬ 
derground garbage cans by mail sends 
you a neatly printed booklet giving you 
all the information you need to place 
an order, and supplements this piece by 
a personal letter giving the names of 
neighbors of yours who have installed 
these garbage cans and found them sat¬ 
isfactory. 

By use of an electric typewriter it is 
possible to give a personal touch to let¬ 
ters answering inquiries which go far 
toward making the prospect pleased. In 
using these machines your letter is per¬ 
forated on a paper stencil similar to a 
piano player roll. It is then put on the 
machine and any number of letters can 
be quickly run off, the machine auto¬ 
matically stopping at desired points to 
give the operator an opportunity to fill 
in special information. One girl with 
three of these machines can turn out an 
increditable number of letters with an 
equally increditable increase in results. 


24 






FRANKS DAVIS, PRESIDENT ARTHUR C DAVIS. TREASURER 



Frank E.Davis Company 

PACKERS, IMPORTERS AND DISTRIBUTORS 

Salt Mackerel 

Codfish, Fresh Lobster, Etc. 

Mail Order Dealers 

FOUNDED IN 1885 INCORPORATED f 1905 

Gloucester.Mass. 


}^rs, J. C. Aspley, 
Glencoe, Ill. 


Dear Mrs. Aspley: 

The best answer I can make to 
your inquiry about our fish is the cir¬ 
cular enclosed. If you are really fond 
of good fish, I am sure you will enjoy 
readmg it. 


There is nothing I can add to 
it - except possibly to emphasize the 
poinft that my fish really are quite dif- 
fer^t from the store kind. My thirty 
yearb experience has taught me a lot 
abou^ the fish business. And what I've 
lea^ied I’ve turned into account for my 
custdmers. 


J. 


^ am growing gray. I have a 
ni'c^ ^s'dness. And my fondest desire is 
th^Kl^h^k E Davis’ name may never 

VJi^'y^hing to anyone, anywhere, but 
satisfactory, honest dealing. 

ir ' 

jlji 11; !] A , Send any order you wish from 
I'thejelidUiOBed circular with perfect con- 
''jEidj^hji^ematlit will please you or I 
yjbur money. 



Frank Davis has built up a business of 100,000 accounts by letter. This 
is the first in a series of follow-ups used on inquiries. It pulls 16 percent. 
The two succeeding letters bring the total inquiries sold to 33 percent. 


25 


















Writing About Your Advertising 


I T is time to put a soft pedal on talk 
about “creating a demand” in let¬ 
ters to dealers. Consumer advertis¬ 
ing is a wonderful selling force. It has 
lifted obscure manufacturers into places 
of leadership. It has made captains of 
industry out of small business men. But 
we over-rate it when we think it is go¬ 
ing to send crowds to the dealer’s store 
demanding our goods. We even over¬ 
rate it if we think that our advertising 
alone v/ill force a dealer to carry our 
merchandise. 

A sales manager for a well-known 
food product concern, which depends 
on its national advertising to open up 
new accounts as well as move goods olf 
the dealers’ shelves, recently asked his 
salesmen to furnish him with a full re¬ 
port on every new dealer called upon 
who did not buy. An analysis of these 
reports at the end of the month showed 
more dealers had declined to buy “until 
they felt the demand” than for any 
other reason. The salesmen, it seemed, 
laid great stress on the demand that the 
advertising would create. 

“Fine,” said the dealer, “just as 
soon as I begin to get calls for it I will 
send you an order”. In some cases, of 
course, the salesman was able to show 
the dealer that he could not afford to 
“wait until he had a call”—but it in¬ 
creased the selling resistance just that 
much. By changing the approach, so 
as to head off this objection, the per¬ 
centage of “no sales” was cut down ma¬ 
terially. The same should be true of 
your sales letters. 

“From my experience,” says R. A. 
Ware, general sales manager of the Log 
Cabin Products Company, “I do not be¬ 
lieve there is a line, including Log Cabin 
Syrup, which retailers must carry, for 
if advertising could create such a pow¬ 


erful demand it would force the retailer 
automatically to handle products so ad¬ 
vertised and there would be no need for 
salesmen.” 

There are cases where exceptional re¬ 
sults have been obtained from letters 
urging dealers to take advantage of na¬ 
tional advertising — the letter used at 
the outbreak of the European war by 
The Three-in-One Oil Company being a 
case in point. But as a rule, better re¬ 
sults are obtained if the letter contents 
itself with giving the dealer facts show¬ 
ing the number of people in his neigh¬ 
borhood who will read the advertising. 
Point out that advertised goods are eas¬ 
ily sold. He knows this to be true and 
will agree with you. Experience has 
taught him that the advertising a man¬ 
ufacturer does familiarizes the con¬ 
sumer with the merit of the article. 
When the dealer offers it to the con¬ 
sumer the name will do the selling. It 
is not necessary for the dealer to devote 
several minutes to convincing a cus¬ 
tomer that it is reputable merchandise. 
This is called “consumer acceptance” 
merchandising, and is now used by 
many of the largest national adver¬ 
tisers. 

Another point that should not be 
over-looked when you write a dealer 
about proposed national advertising is 
to talk profit on the unit sale as well as 
profit on the volume. Many dealers are 
prejudiced against advertised merchan¬ 
dise. They have an idea that they are 
paying for the advertising. They men¬ 
tally associate advertised goods with 
small profit sellers. Consequently it is 
well to see that every letter going out 
paints a profit picture in the dealer’s 
mind, with a tingling cash register in 
the foreground. There is nothing so 
dear to a dealer’s heart as the jingle of 
his cash register. 


26 




LETTER BY 

J. NOAH H. SLEE 

NEW YORK 


Dear Sir; 

$2,900 FOR ONE BIO AD IN YODR CITY NEXT SUNDAY 

We’re not quitters. War or no war, we’re advertising 5-in One 
stronger than ever. This is our big business opportunity — and yovirs. 

Next Sunday morning you will see $2,900 worth of good 3-in-Ono 
advertising on the baok ocver page of the Sunday Magazine Section of 
the (name of local paper here). That big EXTRA ad is for an extra 
push for you right now - in addition to all our regular advertising 
going on all the time. 

This is our fight against the Folly of Business Fear, against 
Business Cowardice. Everybody must eat, must wear olothes, must oil 
with S-in-One. It’s the oheapest because it goes the farthest. Every¬ 
body has known it for twenty years. The 1914 crops are record-breakers. 
We have a sound ourrenoy law. The Federal Reserve Board is created. 

An American Merchant Marine is rapidly being created - and the Panama 
Canal is doing business. Those are real reasons for us all to be op¬ 
timists - and rout the croakers. 

This now $2 ,900 special ad will appear simultaneously in the 
Chicago Herald, Minneapolis Journal, Philadelphia Press, Pittsburgh 
Post, Washington Star, Buffalo Covirier, Detroit Tribune, Baltimore Sun, 
Cleveland Leader and Cincinnati Commercial Tribune. It will cover the 
United States like a bed-spread. Your dealers will be immediately 
benefited - they will need 3-in-6ne Oil. 

Remember, your profits are 24^, 26 % and 29^ — REAL jobbing 
profits. How is your 3-in-Ono Oil stock? Can you take care of all 
orders for the 10^, 26^ and 50(^ sizes - and the fast selling 25^ HANDY 
Oil Can? Why not call in your stock clerk, right now and find out? 

Then — 

Order today what you need, so you can "cash in" on this speoial 
push in your territory. 

Yours optimistically. 


THREE IN ONE OIL COMPANY. 


For those who have forgotten how to write order-getting letters we show 
this one sent out to a list of jobbers during the panicy days of 1914. It 
sold almost immediately over 72,000 bottles of Three-in-One Oil. 


27 



“Halo” Sales as Talking Points 


O NE of the large advertising agen¬ 
cies has been able to build up a 
lucrative business by simply se¬ 
lecting concerns whose advertising they 
would like to handle and then going to 
the customers of that concern and find¬ 
ing out from them why they put in the 
line. This information enabled the 
agency to prepare a series of advertise¬ 
ments which were far better than any¬ 
thing that concern had ever before 
used. 

The next time you are in a quandry 
as to what to put into a series of fol¬ 
low-up letters take a look at your old 
ledgers. Pick out some of the “bell 
wether” accounts and find out the his¬ 
tory of their dealings with your house. 
Find out how they came to start buying 
from you in the first place; why their 
orders have steadily increased and what 
they think of your proposition at this 
time. Not all of them will tell you, but 
you will surely get enough material in 
this way for a series of follow-up let¬ 
ters that cannot be beat. 

The reason “halo” sales make such 
good letters is because people are like 
sheep—they follow the leader. If they 
know that the leaders in their lines are 
your customers they will feel more in¬ 
clined to climb into the band wagon 
with them. Then, again, concrete state¬ 
ments carry more weight than general¬ 
ities. It is much more effective to tell 
why one man buys from you, citing 


names and figures, than it is to make a 
general statement telling why all the 
customers on your books buy from you. 

The value of letters of this kind can 
be materially increased if the names 
mentioned are brought home to the 
reader by local association or by divid¬ 
ing your list into vocations. If you sell 
through the dealer, dealers in the South 
will be particularly impressed when you 
tell them why a certain well-known 
Southern store, in a city of about the 
same size as theirs, carries your line. If 
you sell to manufacturers, food prod¬ 
uct concerns would be more inclined to 
buy if you told them why the Beechnut 
Packing Company, or Armour & Com¬ 
pany find it profitable to buy and use 
the thing you have to sell. 

Watch your orders carefully for ma¬ 
terial of this sort. A plier manufac¬ 
turer one day received an order for 
pliers from The American Telegraph 
and Telephone Company. He investi¬ 
gated and found that the purchasing 
department of this institution had made 
an analysis of the steel used in nearly 
twenty different pliers and had found 
that the steel used by this particular 
manufacturer graded eighty two out of 
a possible hundred points, while the 
steel used by his nearest competitor 
graded only sixty. Needless to state, 
this information gave him the basis for 
a letter that would be hard to excel as 
a confidence builder. 


28 





AUTHOR NOT KNOWN 


l&r* John B. Smith, 

Aahtabnla, Ohio. 

Doar Mr* Smith: 

Just think! 

Tha Wilson Stores Co* of Das Moines, Hev York, setxt us 
thair first order for shoes in 1914. 

It amounted to only 133.00. That was three years ago. 

In 1916 they sent us their hext order. 

It amr>uated to |185.00. That was two years ago. 

Ih 1916 they ordered again. 

The order went over ^600.00 — and that was a year ago. 

To-day I got another order from them. This order emoxinted 
^ 11,060.45 . 

Looks as though a line like ours is a pretty good thing 
for a store like theirs. 

And as your store and their store are "two of a kind" — 
each has a good traie that knows a good thing when they see it — 
why wouldn't our line of shoes increase sales and profits for you 
Just as it did f6r Wilson A Co.? 

Their trade was slow and small at first. But STYLE plus 
VALUE soon made it grow quick and big. 

Unless you give your business and yoia* customers THE BEST 
you are ihe loser. 

Just a small order to start will do to prove this to your 
trade and to your Bank a/c. 

Then when the demand multiplies you can multiply your 
orders - and your profits will multiply themselves. 

Tours for multiplication — of that kind, 

Qensral Manager. 


Five letters like the above, each citing the history of a star customer, added 
573 new accounts to the books of a shoe concern which was already sup¬ 
posed to have “complete distribution.” 


29 









Keep OflF the Beaten Path 


T he writer recently had occasion 
to make an analysis of the con¬ 
tents'of the waste paper basket at 
the desk of a purchasing agent for a big 
public utility company. There were 
twenty-seven letters in it. Not one. of 
the letters was above the ordinary. 
There was no plan behind them. The 
words themselves were colorless and 
commonplace. It seemed almost incon¬ 
ceivable that concerns of the type rep¬ 
resented would let such letters leave 
their establishment. 

If a letter is worth while sending out 
at all it is worth your while to take the 
time to choose words that mean some¬ 
thing. We are all naturally inclined to 
mental laziness. We use the first word 
that comes to our mind. It is the easiest 
way. We excuse our shiftlessness by 
thinking that writing is out of our line 
anyway. 

The main distinction between the 
work of a master letter writer and just 
an ordinary letter writer, is that he 
will spend an hour, or five hours if nec¬ 
essary, to pick the one word that will 
best express the thought he wants to 
register. I know an advertising man in 
New York who spent the best part of a 
week to think of three words that would 
get “punch” into an advertisement that 
he was writing. Yet the average busi¬ 
ness man would think it terrible if he 


had to spend five minutes looking for a 
better word! 

The letter for the Commercial Poster 
Company of Cleveland, written by 
James Wallen, is an excellent illustra¬ 
tion of carefully chosen words. There 
is nothing clever about the letter. It 
does not tell a grotesque story to win 
attention. It holds your interest by the 
very force of its picturesque wording. 
Commenting on this letter, Henry C. 
Garrott, the St. Paul chocolate manu¬ 
facturer said in the “Northwestern 
Druggist”: 

“This is what might be termed a su¬ 
per-sales letter. It goes to advertising 
managers of important firms. It is 
signed by the president of a large cor¬ 
poration, and I surmise he composed it 
— not his advertising department. I 
picture him as a dynamic person, who 
crowds his thoughts into the smallest 
possible space—one who concerns him¬ 
self only with highly concentrated es¬ 
sentials— as befits the executive of a 
large establishment. There is something 
individual about the flow of his lan¬ 
guage. The words and phrases are not 
the ones generally used in similar con¬ 
nection. Yet, they seem to fit the writ¬ 
er’s meaning exactly, and their unusual¬ 
ness adds vigor to the message. It is 
so crowded with thought, most of us 
must stop and think to get it. Then, 
it dawns on us, here is a very interest¬ 
ing piece of business literature.” 






LETTER BY 
JAMES WALLEN 
E. AURORA, N. Y. 


Mr. James Wallen, 

E., Aurora, N.Y, 

Dear Sir:- 

The enclosed proof exhibits an advertisement 
recently published in “Printere' Ink". 

It is an endeavor to convey to poster users 
somewhat of the spirit we devote to the mak¬ 
ing of the murals of the streets. 

pure, full-color inks, which retain their 
tones with indifference to burning sun and 
washing rain, are used on every poster put 
thru our plant. 

We lithograph on paper with body that wel¬ 
comes ink auxd holds it - the very best stock 
that the m rket yields.. 

These superior materials are handled in the 
true craftsman manner by men seasoned in 
lithography. 

I will personally handle your inquiry and 
submit proposals on the creation and repro¬ 
duction of "lithographs extraordinary. 



President 

THE COMMERCIAL POSTER COMPANY 


ARM/ARK 


This letter proved unusually successful on a list of advertising managers. 
It not only pulled a high percentage of replies, but aroused much favorable 
comment. 


31 








Our Salesman is Coming to See You 


A dvance letters are usually re¬ 
garded as a help for salesmen. 
This, of course, they are. But the 
right kind of an advance letter will go 
far toward making a customer realize 
that he is doing business with your rep¬ 
resentative, and not with a salesman. 
In plain words: It will serve as a point 
of contact with the house thereby re¬ 
ducing just that much chance for a 
salesman to leave and take your best 
customers along with him. 

Most advance letters and announce¬ 
ments are signed by the salesman. ‘T 
will be in your town on March 15th, 
don’t place any orders for coffee until 
you see me” is the stereotyped form of 
the usual advance card. This is the kind 
of a card the salesman likes—it puts 
him in the limelight. Naturally the 
salesman welcomes every opportunity 
to get on an intimate, personal basis 
with his customers. But at the same 
time the personality of the house should 
be injected into the relationship as well 
as the personality of the salesman. The 
foregoing applies particularly, of 
course, to a salesman calling on estab¬ 
lished trade. 

When the product is a one time seller 
— like a machine or service — advance 
letters can be used profitably to secure 
interviews. The right kind of a letter 
will usually pull about ten percent re¬ 
turns, most of which can be turned in¬ 
to orders by a good salesman. In this 
type of advance letter it is usually bad 
practice to attempt to get interviews by 
strategy. Make it an undisguised re¬ 


quest for an interview, depending on an 
appeal to gain, pride or both. 

In using advance cards in provincial 
territory, where buyers in one town are 
known to buyers in neighboring towns 
the returns from a mailing can be ma¬ 
terially increased by the u;se of local 
names. Tell the prospective buyer about 
friends of his who have, bought the 
thing you are selling and they will nat¬ 
urally want to find out what it is and 
what it can do for them. Every man 
in business harbors a secret fear that 
something is going to slip by him in the 
dark. It is a fear that can be exploited 
in advance letters. 

When the prospects are restricted to 
a few concerns in a town, all of whom 
should be called upon by a salesman, it 
is well not to use a return card asking 
a salesman to call. Most business men 
don’t want to be bothered with sales¬ 
men. Let the advance letter simply 
state that your salesman will call, and 
endeavor in the letter to get him a fa¬ 
vorable interview. A great deal of a 
salesman’s time is wasted in hop-skip¬ 
ping all over a territory to work ques¬ 
tionable leads. Better results from a 
day’s work will invariably be secured 
if he goes up one street and down an¬ 
other working the prospects as they 
come. This plan gives the salesman a 
greater number of hours in the pres¬ 
ence of buyers, and it is a principle of 
salesmanship that the more time spent 
in the presence of buyers the greater 
the number of orders resulting. 


32 





Auld Lang Syne. 



T, J, Baughton, 

The Newark Optical Store 
Newark, H, J. 

Dear Mr, Baughtonc 

Last year increasing responsibilities in 
connection with his duties as Manager of 
our New York brsmch made it imperative 
for us to secure a representative to take 
over the territory which Mr. J.H. Bohling 
had covered for so many years. 

You might think from glancing at the top,of 
this letterhead that we Ycre trying to pull 
some "sob stuff" with the lights dimmed and 
the^orchestra playing "Hearts and Flowers", 
but the sentiment is occasioned by a remark 
that Bohling made at the time he turned the 
territory over to Mr. Price. 

He said, "I don't believe in securing business 
through friendship, but some real friendships 
have grown out of my business relation with 
the men whose cooperation has made possible 
my success with the Company". 

When Bohling relinquished the territory, he 
requeste"’ that we make an arrangement which 
would allow liim to see his old friends at 
least once a year and he will be with you 
on__. 


Cordially yours, 

AMBRICAH OPTICAL COMPANY. 


Gen. Sales Mgr. 

"Promises may get friends, but it is perform¬ 
ance that must nurse and keep them." 


This letter is one of a series of unique advance letters written by R. E. 
Spencer, now sales manager of the Remmers Soap Company while he was 
in charge of sales for the American Optical Company, Southbridge, Mass. 


33 










The Man Who Won’t Pay Up 


T he first principle in planning col¬ 
lection letters is to assume that 
the man is honest. Some are care¬ 
less, some are unfortunate, some are ir¬ 
responsible, but none are dishonest. 
Plan your collection letters to hit these 
three classes in succession. Put a smile 
in each letter, because the man who is 
in a good humor will be more inclined 
to pay than if he is grouchy. Collec¬ 
tion letters based on this theory will al¬ 
ways produce better results than the 
ordinary cold-blooded “pay-or-I’ll-sue” 
letters usually sent out by the credit 
department. 

But after you have sent out letters 
covering these three classes there will 
still be some who haven’t paid, possibly 
not even acknowledged your letters. 
What are you to do about them? If 
the amount is small, and delivery dif¬ 
ficult to prove, it is sometimes a good 
plan to wipe the slate clean and send the 
man a receipted bill. At least you will 
make a friend, and there is always a 
chance that such unusual treatment will 
shame him into settling in part at least. 
But if the amount is large you will, of 
course, have to force collection. 

At this point most concerns throw 
tact to the winds and go right after the 
man hammer and tongs. Being human 
he will resent your threat. In his mind 
he will consign you to the snowless re¬ 
gions down below. Enemies have never 
done a business any good yet, and it is 


the opinion of some of our most success¬ 
ful business men that even at the last 
stage the velvet glove should be used. 

One very successful writer of collec¬ 
tion letters is F. B. Stevens of Detroit. 
A series of letters used by him in his 
business was recently revised by Louis 
V. Eytinge, a lifer in the Florence pen- 
intentiary, and syndicated by him to 
business houses. These letters have 
made good under widely varying condi¬ 
tions. They averaged 96 percent collec¬ 
tions. Recently Eytinge released the 
copyright on the letters and published 
them in “The Mail Bag”, a journal of 
mail salesmanship edited by Tim Thrift 
of Cleveland. The basis of the first 
three letters in the series was to fasten 
a statement to the letters with a 
string, and make a play in the letter 
about tying the string on your thumb 
so you won’t forget. When they had 
failed the smile was dropped from the 
next letter, which we reproduce here. 
This letter invariably pulled when all 
other methods had failed. 

Collecting money is a selling proposi¬ 
tion. It is only proper and fitting that 
the sales department have a hand in the 
preparation of collection letters. Too 
often the showing made by the credit 
department in the shape of a compara¬ 
tively small loss is made at the expense 
of a comparatively large volume of 
sales. 


34 





LETTER BY 

LOUIS VICTOR EYTINGE 

FLORENCE, ARIZ. 


Dear Sir: 

Do you remem'ber the story of Midas, the 
great king of ancient days? You know he was said 
to have the magic touch—that everything he touched 
turned to gold. 

Now, if we had the touch of Midas, we*d 
not be writing this letter. We would not be in¬ 
sisting on payment of the amo\mt you are owing us, 

I—. 

A contract is a contract and should be 
lived up to. If we give our word to the bank to 
pay, we have to bo right there with the money at 
the proper time—or if vre are not, the bank uses 
the law on us. All the business of the world 
would go to smash if we couldn't depend on the sa- 
oredness of a commercial agreement. And, in order 
that we may make our payments as WE agree, wo expect, 
you to pay us the money due us. That's fair, is it 
not? 

Frankly, if some one owed you the money 
due us from you, for as long a time, and you need¬ 
ed it just as we do—wouldn't you go after it with 
all the power you could use? To be sure you would. 
Then please treat us as fairly as you would expect 
to be treated. Just give us the square deal. 

We will expect your prompt remittance 
of ^-(amount . 

Earnestly yours. 


One of a series of five collection letters which performed the remarkable 
feat of cleaning up an entire list of bad debts for a Pennsylvania business 
concern that had gone into the hands of a receiver. 


35 





Does He Discount His Bills? 


I T has been demonstrated over and 
over again that a customer who dis¬ 
counts his bills will buy more than 
one who is behind in his account. For 
that reason the sales department has a 
direct interest in collections, quite aside 
from the interest of the credit depart¬ 
ment. Not all sales executives realize 
this. Too often they feel that collect¬ 
ing the money is the other fellow’s job, 
and they are not particularly interested 
in how they do it so long as they make 
the collection without mussing up the 
relationship between the customer and 
the house. 

In this connection one concern 
started a campaign to “get more cash 
into Dayton”. The salesmen were en¬ 
listed in the drive. They were told by 
the management why it was important 
to get in the money and seventeen dis¬ 
tinct reasons were cited as follows: To 
pay interest on over $1,000,000 invested 
in patents and inventions; to purchase 
new land for the erection of new factory 
buildings; to build new buildings; to 
purchase stocks of raw materials; to 
meet a large payroll of over $175,000 
a week; to replace old machinery with 
more efficient types; to pay insurance 
on plant, equipment and branch offices; 
to save interest that would have to be 
paid on loans from the bank; to pay 
taxes which are steadily mounting; to 
provide for advertising which amounts 
to over $500,000 a year; to pay the $10,- 
000 a month freight bills; to pay sales¬ 


men their commissions; to make dona¬ 
tions to worthy causes; to pay em¬ 
ployees their share in the profits; un¬ 
expected expenses; welfare work; bad 
debts; refunds, etc. The salesmen for 
this company had never realized before 
just how much money it took to operate 
the business and it opened their eyes. 
They got behind the campaign and the 
amount carried on the books was cut 
down very substantially in a few 
months. 

There are many executives in the 
same position as these salesmen. They 
know that it takes a great deal of 
money to operate a business, but they 
have become so used to carrying big 
amounts on the ledger that it never oc¬ 
curs to them that this amount may 
quite easily be cut down if desired. You 
will be sui’prised how easy it is to get 
your customers to discount their bills if 
you will sell them on the idea. It is 
largely a matter of writing them the 
right kind of a letter and keeping after 
them consistently. 

Even in times like these when money 
is scarce it is by no means impossible 
to get your money in quickly, if you will 
but try. On the opposite page we show 
a letter that one concern found very 
successful in this connection. Perhaps 
you can change it around a bit and use 
it in your business. The letter is in¬ 
cluded in this collection through the 
courtesy of J. J. Sherlock, of the Illinois 
Nail Company. 


36 





LETTER BY 

J. J. SHERLOCK 

CHICAGO 


Mr. Julius Schroeoer, 
% Schroeder & Sons, 
Chicago, Illinois. 

Dear Ur. Schroeder; 


Figure it out yourself. 

for cash" means 15 ^ to 25^ a keg on nails. 

"4^ for cash" means 24J? a year to you. 

"4^ for cash" means it would pay you well to borrow at the 
bank and take that discount. 


for cash" means the orders are always welcomed, 
filled promptly, and newer followed up by a "please remit" 


always 

statement. 


There are many advantages in that method of buying. I helps 
hold your trade, gives you the finest credit in the world, and more 
profit than any other method. 


You would bo surprised to know how many busi ness men prefer 
to buy that way. The extra profit means a whole lot to them and they 
don't let it get away. 

Credit Rating has nothing to do with it, one way or the other. 
It isn't a matter of "rating" but of SAVIKG. 

Think it over - Figure it out - Try it out. 

IT WILL PAY TOD. 

Lot the "Silent Salesman" handle your next nail order. 

Yours for profit. 


Sales Manager. 

F. S. Of course if you prefer the old terms of "60, 2^-10-from 
Invoice date" we'll handle the order that way. It's up to you. 


The man who wrote this letter is secretary of the Illinois Nail Company. 
His letters have opened accounts that fill seven ledgers. He does more 
business by letter than the combined sales of their seven salesmen. 


37 




The Customer Who Stopped Buying 


W HY is it that so many concerns 
spend money lavishly and go to 
no end of effort to get accounts 
onto their books, only to neglect them 
afterwards? The inevitable result of 
this policy is that sooner or later the 
customer stops buying. As a result 
your ledgers become cluttered with dead 
accounts. But because they are in the 
ledger and carried as “customers” no¬ 
body thinks of trying to learn why they 
stopped. 

It is very important that some meth¬ 
od be devised so that when an account 
stops buying it will automatically be 
called to the attention of the sales de¬ 
partment. Two or three letters should 
be written the “dead” account reselling 
the whole proposition, and if not get¬ 
ting the customer back on the active 
list at least finding out the reason for 
his inactivity. Such a series of letters 
not only pay large dividends, but very 
often shed important light on the activ¬ 
ities of competitors or the failure of the 
house to properly serve its trade. 

One very good plan to that end is to 
have the accounting department head 
up statements for every account on the 
ledger each month. The active accounts 
are, of course, filled in on the adding 
machine and mailed out to the cus¬ 
tomer. The inactive accounts, repre¬ 
sented by the statements that remain, 
are turned over to the sales department 


The sales department then type¬ 
writes a brief message on the bottom of 
the statement pointing out that the cus¬ 
tomer’s purchases for the month are 
shown as zero, and expressing the hope 
that they can be of more service this 
month. By quoting a price on some es¬ 
pecially good seller twenty-five to fifty 
percent of such accounts can be put 
back onto the “active” ledger at the ex¬ 
pense of a few postage stamps. 

Another commonly used plan is to 
have a transfer binder which will take 
the loose-leaf ledger pages. When an 
account has remained inactive for three 
or more months it is transferred to the 
“inactive ledger”. At frequent periods 
the sales department takes this ledger 
and sends out a personally typewritten 
letter (not a multigraphed form) to 
each name. A stamped addressed en¬ 
velope should be enclosed with the let¬ 
ter, and the customer asked to tell why 
he has stopped buying. 

An appeal which seldom fails to 
bring back a response in such cases is 
to put the recipient in your place. Ask 
him to suppose that one of his custom¬ 
ers, whom he had always tried hard to 
please, had suddenly and without ap¬ 
parent cause stopped bujdng. He would 
naturally want to know why. Point out 
that you are in exactly that position 
now, and you can’t understand why a 
dealer of such importance in his com¬ 
munity has just stopped buying. 


38 






LETTER BY 
J. J. SHERLOCK 
CHICAGO 


Mr. C, C, Thompeon, 

Chicago, Ill, 

Dear Mr, Thompson; 

Your name has foimd its way into a little book 
on my desk. 

I wouldn t mind that, only it*6 not considered 
an honor to be in that little book. 

It's what I call "the dead book," 

It means the a/c is not now active - it's dead, 
just plain dead, - no saving on nails for you, no profit 
for us, - neither of us as well off as we ought to be. 

Let's get together and put life into the a/c again. 

Send me your next inquiry - or order - and let 
me use a sharp pencil on it. 

If I don't make good the a/c stays "dead." 

It won't stay "dead," - if you give me a chance. 


Yours for 
lively business, 


Another of Sherlock’s letters. This letter produced 56 percent replies with¬ 
in two weeks from the mailing date. Every reply had a good natured 
strain to it. 


39 



Keeping Dealers on Xheir Toes 


I N the furniture trade the “Lysander 
Letters” written by a Round Oak 
Stove salesman and mailed out by 
the Round Oak Advertising Department 
to the trade are considered “the best 
ever”. It is always a problem to keep 
the dealer gingered up, and Salesman 
McCoy, who writes the Lysander letters 
seems to have the happy faculty of do¬ 
ing it without the dealer knowing it. A 
typical McCoy letter is shown on the 
following pages. This particular letter 
was sent out following a raise in the 
price of Round Oak stoves. 

As a general rule clever letters don’t 
pay. The reader will say: “What a 
clever letter”, but what you want him to 
say is: “Where’s my pen, I must send 
them an order right now.” Stunts too 
often detract from the main purpose of 
the letter. But the Lysander letters 
seem to be an exception to the rule. 
They are just enough diiferent from the 
usual run of letters received by the 
dealer to quicken his interest. Having- 
read one letter, the dealer wants to read 
them all, and this in itself is an accom¬ 
plishment. With the dealers on the 
look-out for Lysander’s letters, it is a 
simple matter for the house to get over 
points to the dealers that will very ma¬ 
terially stimulate the sale of Round Oak 
Stoves, and serve to build better deal¬ 
ers. 

As in the case of letters going out to 
jobbers’ salesmen, letters to the dealer, 


particularly letters intended to develop 
them into better merchants, must have 
a plan back of them. The letters should 
be written on illustrated letter heads, 
with frequent change in dress, so that 
they will not become monotonous. They 
should be short and unselfish. They 
should talk with the dealer and not at 
him. 

There is a difference. The letter that 
talks at the dealer carries the inference 
that he is asleep at the switch. It tells 
him how to run his business, something 
that every dealer quite naturally thinks 
he knows how to do far better than 
anyone else. Nobody thanks you for 
unsolicited advice, and it is particularly 
poor tactics to get that “Holier-than- 
thou” flavor into letters to your dealers. 
On the other hand, the letter that talks 
with the dealer sympathizes with him 
in his troubles, talks about what other 
dealers are doing and how they have 
done it, and tactfully suggests that pos¬ 
sibly the idea is one which he can use. 

In spite of the fact that dealers are 
heavily circularized and literally bom¬ 
barded with ginger-up letters of all 
kinds and varieties they will read and 
respond to the right sort of a letter. 
The manufacturer or jobber who builds 
up a good list of dealers as well as their 
principal clerks, and systematically cul¬ 
tivates them through well planned let¬ 
ters will reap rewards out of all propor¬ 
tion to the money invested. 


40 





LETTER BY C. S. McCOY, DOWAGIAC, MICHIGAN 


Personal 
Letter 
to You 


Oct. 4, 1916. 


Members of the Round Oak Family, 

Dear Polks:- 

on. ..r. to .t?«.pt to%5n n S .1 bS? 

j-.^tb.t«... rr?.trjbr* 

to b,“ntL;t:i"L\.iuL'd «?rd‘.!wT'b““ 

:5t’.rtb“?.rL’s:? 

eyery’^Le'^I? uroaJ^parhi^Li? »« Ro«ul Oak goods and 

ye have bought satisfaction, that 

ZilVr. lid'irs'houfd" "ra'cogSled'L's'c?" intelligenYoSsigS oJ'^Tt^daU 

intelligent buying is o^l^Sfthe batS^* 

‘‘T{r ?r f“ Sit?r:L"‘o‘”s.5“' 

of*vheS*^'Bo^ T' heating stove cost at least thirty-two bushels 

bt^ah^l ^*n ^ selling at around a dollar and forty cents per 

^ persuade a farmer to give you th^ty-two bushels 

of wheat for a No. 16 Round Oak heating stove? Try it and see. And still the 
farmer thinks prices have gone up. He is wrong. For him pritres have gone down. 

y°'«- S°°d8. Consumers were 

never in a better mood or a better financial condition to stand a raise than at 
present. Newspapers, magazines, and every other medium of news circulation have 
paved the way for you. If you were to buy Round Oak, or any other brand of 
stoves at present prices, you would be forced to raise your price whether or not 
you wanted to. The goods you purchased last January, or before May 20th, are 
worth just ten per cent more than the day you bought them. You are entitled to 
this ten per cent Ask it and GET IT. It is the reward for the business chance 
you have taken in placing your order before the advance in price. By raising 
your price now, you are not only making money, but you are making it easier for 
the advance you will be compelled to ask of your customers next season. 


It frequently happens that a sales letter can break all the rules and still 
sell goods. The grammar in this letter is terrible; the paragraphs are too 
long; the letter is too long—yet it made good. What’s the answer? 


41 




Do not make the mistake of thinking that present prices are inflated values 
on the part of the manufacturer. There was never a more legitimate market in the 
history of business and the increase in the cost of stoves has been caused by the 
same inexorable law that has caused the abnormal advance in the price of wheat 
viz./ SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 

It has always been the policy of the Round Oak Folks to give the members of 
the family the inside dope on business conditions pertaining to our particular 
business. If you will compare prices listed Jan. let with present prices on raw 
materials, such as copper, Wellsville steel, pig iron, asbestos, aluminum and the 
many other materials used in the construction of Round Oak goods, to say nothing 
about the 15j5 increase in the cost of labor, you will find the Round Oak Folks 
are justly entitled to considerably more of an advance than they have asked. This 
comparison can easily bo made by any dealer, as prices on raw materials are quot¬ 
ed in all hardware journals and a great many newspapers. 

It is an open secret that at present prices, the factory has absorbed a por¬ 
tion of the legitimate increase to idiich they are entitled, and, with these in¬ 
creased prices in effect, the factory is not making as large a percentage of 
profit as they made at the old price, taking into consideration the last year's 
prices on raw material. Wo do not mean to intimate the factory is losing money 
or making less money than they did last year. In spite of the decrease in per¬ 
centage of profit, actual profits, in dollars and cents, will be greater than 
last year, due to the fact that this year the factory is running to the very last 
ounce of its capacity in a vain effort to fill orders, while last year normal 
conditions prevailed and the business was not so greatly in excess of the amount 
anticipated. It is simply a case of selling two stoves at a smaller profit in¬ 
stead of one stove at a normal profit. 

Now, folks, past experience has proved to us that the first cold snap always 
catches some of us short of goods. And this year the factory will in all proba¬ 
bility be the shortest one in the lot. Let us prove our right to the title of 
LIVE ONES by getting our needs supplied while the going is good. If you antici¬ 
pate sales for more goods than you have on hand, don't wait Until the first cold 
snap. That is what the other fellow is doing.. This is not a plea for more busi¬ 
ness. The factory is not begging for business for they have more than enough 
now. Later on it is a moral certainty the mail orders are going to shoot what 
little surplus stock there is so full of holes the balance won't be worth count¬ 
ing. If there is any shooting to be done I want the other fellow to be the tar¬ 
get. Not my territory. 

The above is a good business tip and you will thank me for it later. Watch 
the future and see whether or not I have called the turn. And RAISE YOUR PRICE. 
Thank you. 

C. S. McCoy. 

Originator of the Lysander Letters. 

Round Oak Representative in 
Colorado, Wyoming, and Western Kansas. 


This is the second page of the McCoy letter to Round Oak dealers. 






